By Sarah Green
KHI News Service
TOPEKA, March 15
A key supporter of two bills limiting research on embryonic stem cells and human cloning says they are still alive in the Kansas House, but no one is certain if or when they will advance for debate.
Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee, said the bills” proponents were working to gather enough votes to convince House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, to pull the bills out of the Federal and State Affairs Committee and onto the House agenda.
“We”re still working on a few things,” Landwehr said. “I haven”t had time to do a lot of work with them because of the other hearings that we”re doing. We”ve still got plenty of time left.”
House Bill 2098 creates legal definitions related to cloning
such as “embryo,” “human cloning” and others. A companion measure, HB 2255, would not allow taxpayer funds to be used for research or other activities related to cloning embryos. Both bills were re-referred to the exempt Federal and State Affairs Committee at turnaround after they were heard in the House Health and Human Services Committee.
Since both bills have been heard, there”s no need for the Federal and State Committee to hold another set of hearings. But procedurally, the committee must act to move the bills to the House floor or steps must be taken on the floor to pull them from committee. They also could be offered on the floor as amendments to other bills deemed germane to the issues they address.
Otherwise, the bills are likely to die in the committee where Chairman Arlen Siegfried, R-Olathe, said they are not on his list of priorities.
“They”re kind of sitting there,” Siegfried, R-Olathe, said. “At this point in time, I have no intent of moving them unless I”m instructed by leadership to do so.”
And
so far, Republican leaders aren”t getting involved in the debate, said Sherriene Jones-Sontag, spokeswoman for Neufeld.
“The Speaker is leaving it up to the chair of the committee to move the bills out,” she said. “There aren”t other plans at this time to move either of those two bills out.”
Opponents said the bills would harm the state”s growing bioscience industry.
Lori Hutfles, executive director of the Kansas Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, said the bill restricting taxpayer funds would have a “chilling effect” for Kansas companies.
“HB 2255 purports to ban only state funding for SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) research, but it could have unintended consequences on a variety of research and bioscience initiatives in Kansas,” Hutfles testified to the Health and Human Services Committee.
Currently, a limited amount of embryonic stem cell research on lines approved by President George W. Bush is done at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., said Amy Jordan Wooden, a spokeswoman for the medical school. There”s less than $1 million in federal funding for that program, she said. There”s also work on umbilical cord and adult stem cell research taking place at the medical center, she said.
Kansas State University and the University of Kansas Pharmacy School do research on umbilical cord stem cells as well.
Opponents disagree with the definitions used in HB 2098, which they consider too narrow and not in line with those typically used by organizations such as the National Institute of Health, Hutfles said.
The Legislative Coordinating Council last year asked the Kansas Health Policy Authority to study characteristics of different types of cloning and the terms used in cloning research
cell cloning, therapeutic cloning, reproductive cloning.
In early February, the health policy authority released the study
a spreadsheet comparing various terms collected from the National Institute of Health, the National Academies of Sciences, and the President”s Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity.
The study didn”t factor in to the discussions about 2098 and 2255, Landwehr said, which both use the definitions provided by the President”s Council, which includes scientists, ethicists and others.
“They (the health policy authority) had released (the study) the Friday before we held the hearing and didn”t tell me they had been released,” she said. “I don”t work on the health policy authority”s timeline, and they don”t work on mine.”
Landwehr said she expects both bills to pass once supporters line up the votes.
If the bills are not moved out of the Federal and State Affairs Committee, Rep. Siegfried said, they will stay in the committee until next year. He said he would likely review the bills, along with other legislation left in the committee, before the 2008 session begins.
-Sarah Green is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. She can be reached at
sgreen@khi.org
or at 785-233-5443, ext. 118.